We demonstrate the development of colloidal lithography technique to fabricate large-area plasmonic perfect absorbers using Al, which is an earth abundant low-cost plasmonic material in contrast to Au and Ag. Using numerical electromagnetic simulations, we optimize the geometrical parameters of Al perfect absorbers (AlPAs) with resonances at desired wavelengths depending on the applications. The fabricated AlPAs exhibit narrowband absorptions with high efficiency up to 98 %. By tuning AlPAs parameters, the resonance of AlPAs can be tuned from the visible to the middle infrared region. The AlPAs can be applied for spectrally selective infrared devices such as selective thermal emitters, selective surface-enhanced vibrational spectroscopy (SEIRA) for molecular sensing and selective IR detectors. In this report, we demonstrate applications of AlPAs for selective thermal emitters and SEIRA. The results obtained here reveal a simple technique to fabricate scalable plasmonic perfect absorbers as well as their potential applications in optoelectronic and photonic devices.

Date Published: 19 September 2016
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 9974, Infrared Sensors, Devices, and Applications VI, 99740B (19 September 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2238514

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9974:
Infrared Sensors, Devices, and Applications VI
Paul D. LeVan; Ashok K. Sood; Priyalal Wijewarnasuriya; Arvind I. D'Souza, Editor(s)